Tech SUV runs on hydrogen, electricity

Andrew Leslie is not like other graduate students. Instead of doing research in the library or preparing for an all-inclusive test, he is doing practical thesis work in a garage.

Leslie is part of a Texas Tech engineering team that takes a new vehicle  in this case, a Ford Explorer  and revamps it to create a vehicle that is more modern, environmentally friendly and efficient.

"It gets you hands-on experience doing things, and you see results and actually have deadlines," he said.

Leslie recently returned from the Future Truck competition in Dearborn, Mich., just outside Detroit. He was joined by 11 other graduate and undergraduate students in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering and advanced vehicle engineering. Adviser Tim Maxwell, a mechanical engineering professor, went as well.

The competition involved 15 universities, gave each team a brand-new vehicle and a challenge to make it safer for the environment without detracting from the qualities that make it popular.

The contest annually is sponsored by the Department of Energy and one of the major automobile producers, this year Ford.

Maxwell said this project required the finished Explorer to have the same performance as a gasoline-powered Explorer. The only limitation for the team  besides time and money  was it could not use the original engine or one that came as an option for the vehicle.

The team installed a hydrogen fuel cell in the 2002 Explorer, and after months of garage work, got the sport utility vehicle going. Maxwell said the team took the automobile out on the streets and put it to the reality test.

After a few months, however, the Explorer quit working, so the team acquired another one and opted for a hybrid: a hydrogen engine coupled with an electric motor,which turned out to be a difficult task.

"We spent last year up until now teaching ourselves to modify engines to burn hydrogen," Maxwell said.

The new SUV also has a passive-control system, so the average driver does not need to know what is happening under the hood. The computer determines when which engine is more efficient: the electric motor for city driving with many starts and stops, and the hydrogen-powered engine for highway driving when the vehicle is operating at a constant speed. When the motor is not powering the vehicle, it can act as a generator to recharge the 300-volt batteries, a feature that could prove helpful on long trip.

"It means you shouldn't have to plug it into the wall every night to recharge it," Maxwell said.

However, filling up the tank requires some work.

"There's a lot of it around, but hydrogen doesn't stay anywhere by itself," Maxwell said.

The team gets it from welding shops, which use it for welders and other tools. It goes into two large tanks in the back of the vehicle, which does not allow for any luggage space, one of the drawbacks of hydrogen-powered vehicles.

Another drawback, Maxwell said, is although the tanks monopolized the end half of the SUV, they hold 3.5 kilograms of hydrogen, roughly equivalent to 3 gallons of gas. With that much fuel, the driver can go about 65 miles before having to stop and fill up, a problem the team has acknowledged but decided not to focus on yet.

The toys the team plays with do not come cheap. The tanks are prototypes and are expensive, he said. Ford donated the vehicle, and National Instruments donated the computers. The rest is funded by Tech or sponsors.

"We take money wherever we can find it," he said.

Although Tech's vehicle ranked 15th in this year's competition, the students have high hopes for 2004, when they will be more comfortable with the vehicle and will have had time to fine-tune it.

"For next year we've got to more than double the power output of the engine, which is doable," Maxwell said.

Tech engineering students are not the only ones trying to find ways to make better cars. Many of the big auto makers, the Department of Energy and the military are researching alternate fuels, he said.

As for Leslie and his fellow students, they get the opportunity to be front-runners in the race to a better vehicle, they get to work with state-of-the-art technology,and they get the satisfaction of turning the key and hearing the engine turn on after months of hard work. That makes it all worthwhile, Leslie said.

Plus, he likes cars, and if he's got to be working, he said, he might as well do something he enjoys.